"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." – As W. B. Yeats never said

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Bloom’s taxonomy was developed in the early 1950s by a committee led by the educational psychologist, Benjamin Bloom. The cognitive domain of this taxonomy – which is usually what people mean when they refer to “Bloom’s taxonomy” – is ubiquitous in education and is probably one of the few concepts that most teachers have heard about. It was revised in 2000 and the original and revised versions have a slightly different emphasis, with nouns having turned into verbs and an equalisation of the top three layers:

The taxonomy is a method for classifying educational objectives. Does it fit with what we know about research? Well, perhaps this question is moot. The only way that we could base a classification of learning objectives on anything scientific is if we had firm evidence that there were different brain processes involved. We certainly did not have such evidence in 1956 and we don’t have much now. However, I don’t think Bloom and his committee made or implied such a claim.

There are aspects that I like about the taxonomy. One way of reading the hierarchy is to suggest that we clearly need to know something before we can progress to applying it and so on. However, there are other forms of exegesis that are deeply troubling.

Higher order thinking skills

The top end of Bloom’s taxonomy – the parts that I’ve coloured yellow – are often known as ‘higher order thinking skills’. Again, the ‘higher order’ part is just another classification and, as such, is pretty neutral, although I would disagree with the idea of calling these objectives ‘skills’ and I will explain why later.

The main problem arises when educators start to infer that these are superior kinds of objectives. This can lead to the suggestion that these objectives should be emphasised over the ‘lower order’ objectives of merely remembering rote, disconnected facts. Most teachers who have worked in schools over the last 20 years have probably been exposed to some kind of process where observers come and look at classrooms and then pronounce that not enough higher order questions are being asked or tasks set.

I don’t think that this is what the authors of the taxonomy would have wanted. I think the intention is to emphasise the crucial, foundational importance of knowledge; knowledge first and then everything else. But this doesn’t seem to be how it is interpreted in the wild. As Karen Tankersley suggests in this extract from her book on higher order thinking, “There is simply too much information in the world for us to waste students’ time with regurgitations of basic facts.”

The conjuring into being of a class of thing

The other major problem with Bloom’s taxonomy is that it encourages us to imagine that there is a stable thing that we can label ‘analysis’, ‘evaluation’ or whatever. We assume that ‘analysis’ involves a certain set of mental processes and that, by practising analysis, we may become better at analysis. The trouble is that it’s not at all clear that the mental processes involved in analysing a bar chart have anything in common with those involved in analysing a TV commercial. The domains are completely different. To become proficient at analysing bar charts we must first learn about bar charts before seeing different examples and different contexts. After practice, we may reach our objective. However, once we move on to TV commercials we must start again from the bottom of the hierarchy.

This, at least, is what the research tends to show: First you need a solid base of knowledge. Analysis, evaluation or creativity are not skills that can be trained or exercised like a muscle and then applied flexibly, as required. If we think that they are then we might miss out the vital steps of teaching the domain knowledge that true expertise requires.

Conclusion

I think it is time to put Bloom’s taxonomy out to pasture. I know less about other generic learning taxonomies such as SOLO but they do, superficially at least, seem to suffer from the same issues of interpretation. Instead, we should invest our efforts in attempting to sketch-out out the pathways of progress that are followed in developing an understanding of specific concepts. These would be of real, practical value to teachers, and far more use than a set of cliches to be trotted-out at the next whole-staff meeting.

Update: @penpln has sent me a link to this paper that well worth reading.

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9 Comments on “Bloom’s Taxonomy”

1. When you refer to sketching out progress within specific concepts (conclusion) are you implying you’d like to see something like the progression models Beyond the Bubble has developed for history concepts with linked examples of student work?https://beyondthebubble.stanford.edu/our-approach Or do you mean something different from this?
2. You state that one reason Blooms should be put out to pasture is that it is being interpreted differently in ‘the wild’ as was intended. Does this not imply that one possible alternative solution to this problem would be to go back to the original? Obviously, this would not solve your other objections but I was reminded of this passage in the original which I suspect you would regard as relatively good advice still.

“Another justification for the teaching of knowledge is that it is quite frequently regarded as basic to all the other ends or purposes of education. Problem solving or thinking cannot be carried on in a vacuum, but must be based upon knowledge of some of the realities. The intellectual
abilities represented in the taxonomy assume knowledge as a prerequisite. Knowledge becomes either the material with which the problem solving deals or it becomes the test of the adequacy and accuracy of the problem solving.” pg 33 of the 1956 edition

I actually have no real problem with Bloom’s as it was originally conceived. I also don’t find it particularly helpful or well conceived. So it’s kind of a ‘meh’. It is mainly the issues with how it is interpreted that I object to.

A list of command words can be useful to reinvigorate task variety in a teacher’s practice but a list of 250+ with a false hierarchy is restrictive where teachers manipulate every activity and question to fit somewhere within it.

At worst I’ve seen this lead to a series of 6 questions asked in direct succession by a teacher with awkward phrasing like “Now, manipulate that quote to find out….” which has received a big tick from their mentor!

Martyn Nesbitt (@BGSTeachBetter) Another way of looking at Blooms is not as a ladder or hierarchy the way many use it but rather as a range of skills that we should be encouraging students to develop. We should therefore look for opportunities to introduce and develop these skills. I think that the usefulness of Blooms depends on the subject that you teach. In literary based subjects the basic ideas of acquiring knowledge and making connections and evaluating viewpoints fits quite nicely with the taxonomy. To be honest exam papers in some subjects seem to reflect the basic ideas still.